Secrets
by the queen of slurking
Summary: Everyone has a secret. What are the Cullens hiding?
1. Chapter 1

Secrets

Bella

I've always been grateful that Edward can't read my mind.

My secret is that I love sports. Seriously. Not participating, necessarily, but watching. I love to watch someone score a goal, or run from A to B to be safe. I love selecting a team to support, and then cheering them on mentally.

When they lose I feel their pain, almost. Jasper has given me many a funny look when he's sensed my anger and can't pick up a reason for it. And when my team wins, I'm happy. Like, jubilant.

I guess it started when I was human and Charlie was forever watching some game on TV. I was often up in my room, not watching or listening to the game, but I could still hear little snippets of the announcer's commentary. And then there was always the applause and cheering of a crowd. These little sounds drifted up to me, and I wondered what had happened to make spectators so happy with the way the game was happening. Occasionally I even went to spend some time watching the various games. As I watched, I began to learn more about the games. How to play, who was a good player or bad. What teams were worth supporting and which ones were utterly boring. I also liked how the sports almost seemed to unite people.

The way that all these random people got together to support something they all loved. These people might not even know each other or like each other, but for a set amount of time, they were all united in their support and passion for a favoured team.

I was soon desperate for more sport-knowledge, so I began to read more library books on the various subjects. I dug out dozens of newspaper articles on the subjects, googling terms I didn't understand and learning the rules.

I even tried to join the school's volleyball team as a human, but that didn't work out so well when I tried to spike the ball over the net and it fell, hitting someone directly in the back of the head and giving them a mild concussion. It was not pretty.

It was inspiring.

It was almost intriguing. Then, when I went to watch the first baseball game the rest of my family was playing, I was almost mesmerized. They looked so graceful and coordinated: everything I wasn't. Now, of course, I'm just as graceful and can play just as well as anyone else.

I loved being able to dart from one space to another, to hit the ball easily, to not be tripping over my own feet and landing on my ass the whole time.

For the first time ever, I really enjoyed sport.

In school, I had shied away from PE because I knew that humans weren't so good at exceeding their limits. They could train hard and practise to become faster, stronger, smoother in their game. But they are always limited, and I pitied them. For not being able to move from one side of the school to the other in less than three seconds, if they were so inclined. It dulled my enthusiasm for sports slightly: I had to work to look human. It was only when I was with my family that I could run as fast as I wanted, hit a ball as hard as I liked and make full use of my strength, embracing it rather than trying to stifle it.

One time, I was playing tennis against a human and nearly slipped up, hitting the ball too hard. At home, I played against Emmett and hit the ball so hard, it ricocheted between the two walls eighteen times. Esme was not pleased.

Now, I was running through the forest. I knew there were no humans around, and that made me free to run as fast as I liked. Now, I ran, so fast that I could almost have been flying.

It was exhilarating to run like this. I expended no real effort other than moving, and my feet were barely touching the ground. And when arm-wrestling against Emmett, we were evenly matched for strength. Half the time, I was able to beat him, and I didn't always have the feelings that he was just letting me win.

Sports really were wonderful. I loved them all. Cricket, rugby, football… you name it, I played it.

Of course, I had to keep it quiet from my family. They still didn't know about my love of sports and playing, and I knew that if they knew, I'd be ribbed mercilessly about it for the next century.

And if they did, I would eventually get fed up with sports. Then, I would have to take up something more Bella-ish. Like collecting stamps.

Then again, everyone would tease me about that for the next century. Or maybe the one after.

And that would be why I took up collecting bottle-tops.


	2. Chapter 2

**I. Own. Nothing. One day, I will write a novel, and then I will own something. Until then, I do not own anything.**

Carlisle POV

Everyone has a secret that they keep hidden.

Mine is that I'm obsessed with fairies.

It all started when Alice and Jasper joined the family. Alice is basically a pixie, and living with her made me think of pixies. Technically, pixies are related to fairies, and that's how it all began.

In my spare time, I began to draw fairies. First in black and white, and with the skill level of a three year old. My first drawings, well… let's just say they looked like a cross between Jackson Pollock and Picasso's styles of art. As time passed, I got better. In my office at the hospital, I put aside my paperwork to practise drawing fairies.

One day, it all just clicked into place. I was doing the usual routine of light, careful lines, then slowly joining the lines at a pace only a vampire could manage. Then, I connected the last three lines, removed my pencil from the page. I was struck dumb. For a beginner, the fairy was perfect. I immediately raced to the laminating machine and placed my fairy in the plastic, carefully sliding it through the slot. Once it was done, I picked up the freshly laminated sheet and sighed happily.

The next day, I did it again. This time, the fairy was sitting down, and I outlined it in thin black pen. As with the day before, I laminated it.

Six months later, I had amassed dozens of sketches of fairies. They were posed differently, smiling, sulking, flying, sitting… you name it, it was there. The only thing that was lacking was colour. I had them done in pen, sharpie, pencil, charcoal, and almost any other drawing methods. But they were all in black and white, and I found it rather drab.

Eight months after I'd done my first successful drawing, I picked up a purple coloured pencil and very carefully shaded in the wings. I was well aware that I could snap the pencil, and I really didn't want to. The fairy had to have purple wings, or it'd be ruined. Yes, I could have done the wings in pink, or blue, or green, or any other colour, but I wanted purple. Purple is such a pretty colour, and not so commonly liked. I wanted that for my first fairy that would stand out.

After that, I was drawing fairies daily. In fact, I was drawing them all the time. Even in meetings. When hunting, I was thinking about what my next fairy should look like. I stopped driving in the middle of the road to sketch out a new fairy. The new problem was that I couldn't bear to think of them, lonely and neglected in my office cabinet. It wasn't enough that I took them out to just look at them, or hug them, or stroke their glossy laminated wings.

I began to smuggle them home in my briefcase. Every day, I slipped a few in between my papers and then hid them under my pillowcase when I was alone. Esme never seemed to notice the stack under my pillow, and consequently, the pile got higher. One day, it began to tower quite near to the ceiling. This worried me, as I couldn't bear to think of my precious fairies tumbling all over the place. They might get hurt! Then, they would blame me. What if they didn't forgive me?

I got a new filing cabinet and stored all my precious sketches in there.

After three years, I decided on a new approach.

I would do family fairies.

Alice and Esme were the easiest to portray as fairies. Alice was half-fairy anyway, which made things much awesomer. Esme, not being half fairy, was slightly more difficult. Still, she had the small, delicate appearance which all fairies have. I got hers done quite quickly.

Edward and Rosalie were next. The Edward-fairy was all brooding and mysterious, while Rosalie's sat on a tree stump looking pissed off. Well, that was pretty much her natural state, so it was all good. It worked out quite nicely.

The Bella fairy looked slightly odd, considering that I was trying to show her as a fairy. Finally, I took a slightly abstract approach to Bella. She looked vaguely like herself, as much as someone can when being drawn as a fairy. The thing was, her wings were slightly lopsided. I rationalized this as being because she had flown into a tree. Since fairies are immortal (come on, _everyone_ knows that) her wings would never be straight again. That meant she was always going to be flying slightly crooked, and she had a higher chance of flying into things. Much like when she was human really.

Jasper and Emmett were next. They looked quite good. Considering that one was a soldier a million years ago and the other was a big wrestler type. I have to say, Emmett with wings looked rather cute and innocent. Jasper also looked adorable, but slightly gay, so I gave him hot-pink wings to really emphasize his femininity.

Finally, myself. I didn't look half bad, although I did look more Greek god than fairy. Zeus' younger, better looking brother, as Bella once described me. No matter than Zeus had black hair. What fool doesn't know that? Still, I liked that way of describing my looks. Really handsome, which I was. I mean, I'm a vampire. Of course I look good. I always do! Still, it doesn't hurt to hear that you look like a god.

I took down the photos that lined the hallway and replaced them with my laminated fairy family drawings. I was so proud of them, I just had to showcase them. It would have been a pity to let them sit in a filing cabinet collecting dust.

Strangely enough, my family wasn't best pleased at looking like fairies. They hit the roof and decided I had to go in for counselling.

I wanted to counsel myself, but they insisted that would just make me even stranger. What was that supposed to mean? I wasn't strange! I was awesome. The hot super-doc.

And that is how I ended up in the therapist's office, introducing myself.

'My name is Carlisle Cullen, and I have an obsession with drawing fairies.'

**You like? No offence intended at all… review if you want. Reviews make me happy. Like a leprechaun ****J**


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